Is the ‘Mommy Track’ Still Taboo?

She takes us back to a controversial 1989 Harvard Business Review article by Felice N. Schwartz called “Management Women and the New Facts of Life.” Schwartz started with the fact that not all working women want the same things. Some are chiefly career-focused, making “the same trade-offs traditionally made by the men who seek leadership positions.” However, most women want children, Schwartz wrote, and “are willing to trade some career growth and compensation for freedom from the constant pressure to work long hours and weekends.”

Schwartz, who died in 1996, said that companies should recognize such women as a “precious resource,” and to retain them, should offer more flexibility and part-time work. Such arrangements would likely mean lower pay and a slower career trajectory, but “most career-and-family women are entirely willing to make that trade-off,” wrote Schwartz.

Schwartz’s piece ignited an outcry, Postrel writes. Critics charged Schwartz with consigning women to dead-end jobs, or — as it quickly became dubbed — the “Mommy Track.” “Lower pay for less work offended the reigning idea of a serious career,” Postrel writes.